Grab Yer Assets (GYA) v3 - UnityPackage Import & Management

I've uploaded a video for you to see the problem. The quality is very bad because tinypic seems to downgrade the quality. But i think is enough to see the problem.

http://es.tinypic.com/r/21njtxd/8

 

Thanks for the visual, looks like it clears up after you revert back to All categories, correct?

I did emulate your steps and still not able to replicate the issue so far, BUT if it did clear up when you went back to All categories, then at least I have more of an inkling of where to look.

Also, is this under Unity 3/4/5? I've tried under 5.0.0 & 3.5.7.

 

Yes, after coming back to ALL it start to work fine again. This is under 4.6.3f1 but in 5.0 also happens (not as slow as in 4.6 but is noticeable enough)

I tried deleting the user folder but is not helping either.

Also this is not a problem but i noticed that if i copy all my assets through windows explorer it takes about 2 hours. If i copy the assets with GYA it takes 30 minutes. That's some ¡¡¡¡BLACK MAGIC!!!!

 

Wow, impressive difference! As long as all your files were at the target location, I'm happy!

That just made me try a timing test of my own out of curiosity. Copied 345 assets = 20.45gb via the finder and then GYA. Sadly no improvement, the times were within seconds of each other. And if you're curious it took 2m55s+/-.

Btw, sent you an email to make sure to upgrade to the latest version of GYA, just in case you see this first.

 

Upgraded to the latest version and the problem is gone.

Thank you for your help.

 

Hey, glad that worked.

That will teach me to assume that everyone is running the latest version. Granted it was just released last night, so I sorta snuck that one in.

Hmm, not bad, so as it turns out, I actually solved the problem before you knew you had one. I can live with that.

In the meantime, enjoy and let me know if you have any further issues.

 

Ouch .. That's the first bad review I've seen for GYA in over a year of the package being live.

Hopefully the user that was having an issue reads my response and then checks this forum so that I might find out what they are having a problem with.

Edit: And problem resolved. No more bad review! I now don my happy face once more.

 

A new version is in testing that prevents an error that a few people were having which appears to occur when the Asset Store has been moved by means of a SymLink/Junction. This fix is for the Windows platform at this time.

I mention this because, even though GYA's data files and Old Assets folder were just moved down a level, I have had enough requests to encapsulate them into their very own folder. I will make this change in one of the next few updates.

If you have need of the current WIP version, always feel free to contact me and please include your invoice #.

 

New version has been submitted: 2.15c19e

2.15c19e
- Added: Shows Alt Icon for Incompatible (Newer) Asset Store versions
In Unity 5, no Alt Icons will be shown as there is not (currently) a Unity 6
In Unity 4, Unity 5 assets will show the Alt Icon
In Unity 3, Unity 4/5 assets will show the Alt Icon
- Added: Toggle ‘Menu->Settings->Alt Icon Old Versions’ to Also show the Alt Icon for Older Asset Versions; Default = ENABLED
In Unity 5, Unity 3/4 assets will show the Alt Icon
In Unity 4, Unity 3 Assets with a unity_version tag will show the Alt Icon
In Unity 3, no additional assets will be flagged with the Alt Icon
- Added: ’Menu->GYA <version>’ will show some basic GYA related status info in the console
- Fixed: Inadvertently disabled auto-scanning of the ‘Standard Assets’ folder when switching between different Unity versions during a previous update.

Note: Alt Icon usage is based off of the Unity Major.Minor version and the unity_version tag. For Unity 5, if the unity_version tag is missing the asset is considered older and for Unity 3/4, the asset is considered current.

2.15c18c
- Added: ‘Menu->Maintenance->Clean up Outdated GYA Support Files’ to remove ANY outdated GYA related files including the ‘-Grab Yer Assets (Old)’ folder.
- Reorganized the Maintenance Menu
- Updated the GYA upgrade handling

Note:
After upgrading any/all projects that contain GYA you can run (2) menu items to finalize the upgrade:
1- Menu->Maintenance->Merge Old Assets from Old GYA Versions
2- Menu->Maintenance->Clean up Outdated GYA Support Files
Doing this will ensure that your Old Asset files have been moved if required AND clean up any remaining GYA related files.

This is NOT required for a typical Unity setup and is only provided to assist when a SymLink’d Asset Store folder has been detected or GYA has reported an error when moving the Old Assets folder.

2.15c16b
- Added: ‘Open URL of Selected Packages’ to multi drop-down, invalid assets will be ignored
- Updated: Improved error checks relating to symlinks.

2.15c15j
- Placed GYA’s supporting files/folder into it’s own folder:
'../Unity/Grab Yer Assets/Asset Store-Old’
'../Unity/Grab Yer Assets/GYA Settings.json'
'../Unity/Grab Yer Assets/GYA Assets.json'
- Added: ‘Menu->Maintenance’ sub-menu added, related maintenance functions have been moved under it.
- Added: ‘Menu->Maintenance->Merge Old Assets from Old GYA Versions’ will move Old Assets from the prior version of GYA to the new Old Asset folder if needed. If you’re not using SymLinks for the Asset Store(s)/Old Assets folder, they will be moved to the new folder automatically. Otherwise, you can run this routine manually to merge the Old Assets into the new folder when you are ready.
- Changed: Refresh Progress Bar default TRUE
- Improved SymLink handling

2.15c12c
- Added: ‘Remove from Current Group’ for removing Multiple Assets from a Group at one time
- Added: ‘Asset Store Packages’ to the Categories drop-down
- Changed: Sort ‘by Date’ to ‘by Date (File)’ = file creation date
- Added Sort ‘by Date (Publish)’ = internal publish date
- Added Sort ‘by Date (Package)’ = internal package build date

2.15c11c
- Added: Unitypackage creation date/time, (Ref/Req: Tiaan), this differs from the File creation date added prior

2.15c11b
- Fixed: Multiple Invert was functioning on the entire list when in a collection/group
- Changed: Optimized and cleaned up a bit of code

2.15c10g
- Fixed: GYA now detects if the Asset Store folder is a SymLink/Junction and will NOT attempt to move it’s data files, if required, if one is detected. Useful information will be shown in the GYA window.
- Added: Error checks around menu items for when GYA detects an error. Prevents possibly trying to access data that would not be there in a controlled error state.

2.15c08a
- Added: Two (2) Progress Bar toggles
“Menu->Settings->Show during Refresh”, default = DISABLED
“Menu->Settings->Show during File Actions”, default = ENABLED
- Changed: ”Menu->Settings->Show All Asset Store Folders" to default = ENABLED

 

New version has been submitted: 2.15c20b

Just a quick update to simplify the Alt Icon usage.

2.15c20b
- Changed: Simplified Alt Icons functionality, ‘Menu->Settings->Other Unity Versions’; Default = DISABLED
In Unity 5, Unity 3/4 assets will show the Alt Icon
In Unity 3/4, Unity 5 assets will show the Alt Icon

Note: The menu item from 2.15c19e has been replaced by the above.

 

Its good you are updating your program for Unity 5. Xeir can I ask you a question. When I download the Unity assets off the store, they are obsolete and won't run in Unity 5 because of code changes. That makes your program less effective I would think. What can be done? Do you know if we are to assume that the Unity team is not going to update the Assets? I am a bit angry that they have not updated them yet, and I am using unreal more because of it. Let me know if you have any advice.

 

Are you talking about the Unity example projects? Because they release examples for Unity versions, like the Bootcamp example was meant for 3.x, Angry Bots for 4.x, and Viking Village for 5.x.

I'm sure they are working hard to bring more example projects and tutorials for Unity 5.

 

Hi malosal-
Your question is just a little vague, so I'm going to respond to each part separately and hopefully cover the important bits.

GYA has been working under Unity 5 for some time now, since the beta, and adapted as things changed.

Many things have changed in Unity 5 and not every developer may have participated in the beta, so it may take some assets awhile yet to be updated for native Unity 5 functionality. This will be a case by case basis as to whether or not a developers asset will work under Unity 5 already or if they still need to update it.

GYA can make it easier to visually identify Unity 5 specific assets so that you know for certain that particular assets will work under Unity 5. Now even that is not foolproof, as many assets, like GYA itself, are released with an older Unity version to show that that asset will work under Unity 3 or 4 or 5. Yet there is no way to tell for certain if an asset with an OLDER Unity version has been updated to work with Unity 5 or not.

I really feel that Unity should have approached the version handling a bit differently as they could have made it SO much simpler. For example, simply upload an asset with ANY version of Unity and CHOOSE the min/max version. As long as there is NOT an open ended max version or we're back to square one.

Hope that answered your question, if not, let me know.

 

I have Standard Assets installed (the Unity 5 one) and I still can't get persist mode to work in Unity 5.
I verified the folder it is trying to copy to is there, but it keeps throwing permission error.

 

Saxi-

If you will, please check/forward the following:
- Go to your 'Standard Assets' folder and check what the permissions are.
- What is the complete error message you are receiving?
- Is this under OS X or Windows? I've tested on both, but doesn't mean something can't be different.

 

Make sure that your account has write access to the 'Standard Assets' folder.

 

Windows.

I can copy stuff into it but I get a UAC prompt to confirm it.
I haven't changed the permissions, they are all default.

Error is:

GYA - Persist - Exception Copying: C:\Program Files\Unity\Editor\Standard Assets\Grab Yer Assets.unitypackage
Access to the path "C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\Unity\Asset Store-5.x\Xeir\Editor ExtensionsUtilities\Grab Yer Assets.unitypackage" or "C:\Program Files\Unity\Editor\Standard Assets\Grab Yer Assets.unitypackage" is denied.
UnityEngine.Debug:LogWarning(Object)
GrabYerAssets.GrabYerAssetsersistEnable() (at Assets/Plugins/Editor/GrabYerAssets/GrabYerAssets.cs:6705)
GrabYerAssets.GrabYerAssets:TBPopUpCallback(Object) (at Assets/Plugins/Editor/GrabYerAssets/GrabYerAssets.cs:2531)
UnityEditor.GenericMenu:CatchMenu(Object, String[], Int32)

 

Yup, as far as i know, there is not a way for me to induce a UAC prompt to allow for the copy from within Unity. I could be wrong but that's what I've found so far.

<We've a large storm about to pass thru, so I'm probably going to lose satellite internet here at any moment.>

You should be able to allow full write access for your account to that folder and that would allow the copy to work as expected.

I'll check back later to see if that worked for you.

 

I'm sure that would work, but would think this would have popped up, no one else having problems with it or is everyone using OSX?

 

Just added write permission, and as expected it works, but curious if other people have it working without modifying permissions on windows.

 

As I recall, only had one other person have the same thing occur. But, I do not know how many people make use of Persist. Myself, I couldn't live without. It's just too handy.

Glad that worked, as expected. I've changed the message in the error to mention to allow write access to the folder. Thought I had already done that in the past.

 

In 5 I didn't mind so much so I just ignored it since the asset store is nearly instant. In 4.6 it is brutal but I never had problems there. I don't particularly like doing un-uniform permissions in system level folders like that but it's simple enough.

 

If I find a clean way to do it, I'll implement it, but so far, I haven't run across it.

 

New version has been submitted: 2.15d02b

2.15d02b
- UI: Moved Offline functions to the Maintenance section
- Adjusted the file renaming routine

2.15c28a
- Fixed: ‘Delete ALL Selected’ may not have processed all marked files after a recent change to list handling
- Fixed: Sort ‘by Date (Publish)’ should sort correctly now

2.15c24a
- Changed: File naming format now adds Unity version of the package after the package version. ‘unknown’ is used if none. i.e.- ‘Grab Yer Assets (v2.15c24a) (3.5.7f6)’

2.15c22a
- Tuned the Refresh routine, should take less time

 

Seems every update Unity puts out for Unity 5 requires me to manually set the permissions of the standard assets folder. Is there anyway to get away from the standard assets as on Windows it's kind of a pain.

 

Using the Standard Assets folder to store a copy of GYA is the only way I know of to have Unity list GYA under Assets->Import Assets menu for easy access, even when it hasn't been installed yet.

I am looking into the security aspects to possibly request user authentication, as required, when performing the copy. Granted, even that will have it's own downfall; being prompted for authentication whenever there is an update of GYA that needs to be copied to the SA folder.

Dealing with Windows security/UAC is however, something I haven't dealt with to date under Unity as I mainly develop under OS X. While I'm sure it's doable, it may take a little time to fully dig into what is required to do so as I'm still working on the documentation at this point. But again, we're back to then being prompted when Persist needs to perform its copy.

I'll do some more thinking on it and as always, I'm open to suggestions.

 

Visual Studio Tools for Unity seems to have it working really good. Might be worth looking at how they do it.

 

I'll take a look, thanks Saxi.

 

New version has been submitted: 2.15e02a

2.15e02a
- Added: ‘Rename with Version’ for Right-Click and Multiple Select. This will rename the file using the title tag as the file name and append the version
- 'Export as CSV' now includes the unity_version.
- The Package Info window displays package/unity version to the right of the title name if appropriate.

2.15d10a
- A few minor UI adjustments.
- Changed: File renaming to ONLY include the ()'s around the unity version if present for better list and folder sorting. i.e.- ‘Grab Yer Assets v2.15d10a (3.5.7f6)’

 

Hi Xeir, It's been a while since I have had to worry about managing my purchased assets but I've just noticed that Unity 5 does not appear to be aware of any of the asset store downloads from when I used Unity 4. It wants me to re-download all of my assets. That's about 80GB of downloads, not including assets that are no longer available for download. Not happening Unity.

Can Grab Yer Assets help migrate downloads from Unity 4 to Unity 5 for me? Basically, I want to be able to open the Asset Store download window and hit Update All to get everything I have neglected to download for the last few months but not stuff I've already downloaded.

 

Hey SpectralRook-

Correct, Unity 4 uses the old "Asset Store" folder & Unity 5 uses the new "Asset Store-5.x" folder.

A few ways to migrate your data:
GYA: "Menu->Maintenance->Move Asset Store Assets" and choose Unity 5

Manually: If you are no longer using Unity 4, you can also simply rename the "Asset Store" folder to "Asset Store-5.x"

Hope that helps!

 

Got it. Thanks. Think my backup appliance is going to be unhappy with me moving 80GB's of files though.

GYA is still a great asset. Appreciate the help.

 

You can also make a symbolic link from 4 to 5.
I actually symbolic link mine to dropbox so it is synced across my computers.

 

Ah yes, I forgot to mention the symlink option. Good catch Saxi.

 

I've noticed with Unity 5.1 that some of the icons have color shifted. This will be addressed in the next update.

 

New version has been submitted: 2.15e02a

2.15f12a
- CHANGE: Minimum Unity version supported: 5.0.0
- Fixed: Icon colors in Unity 5.1
- Fixed: UnityEditor.EditorWindow.title is obsolete

Please note that 2.15e02a is the last version officially supported by Unity 3.x & 4.x.
Active development will be focused on the Unity 5.x platform.

 

GYA has been reduced in price for the next few days. Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone has an enjoyable and relaxing time with family and friends over the holiday weekend!

 

If I could, I have a suggestion.

In the process of "overriding" Unity's default Debug class, I found that GYA really didn't handle it well. GYA seems to specify that all of its Debug calls should be routed through UnityEngine.Debug, which I was obviously trying to get away from, but most importantly it caused a hundred or so compilation errors in Visual Studio.

The fix is actually really easy, so I figured I'd post it in case you wanted to integrate it into a future GYA version. In GrabYerAssets.cs, you just need to:

1. Comment out/remove these two lines:

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Diagnostics;
2. using Debug = UnityEngine.Debug;

2. Change this:

Code (CSharp):

1.  // Stopwatch
2. Stopwatch stopWatch = new Stopwatch();

To this:

Code (CSharp):

1. // Stopwatch
2. System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch stopWatch = new System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch();

That's it! I've been running it for a while and haven't noticed anything out-of-the-ordinary, and it fixed all of the issues I was having. (Hopefully it's useful!)

Thanks for GYA! I'd be a lot less efficient without it.

 

@electroflame Suggestions are always welcome!

At one time, there were a few other routines and such that it made sense to have the Debug override at that time.

As you can tell, that has since changed, so I fully agree. After having verified that there are no breaks in functionality, I will include the changes that you have mentioned.

I appreciate you pointing it out and always glad to hear that GYA is making things easier!

 

Awesome, thanks! I'm glad to hear it was a useful suggestion.

 

Hi

I noticed that recently GYA doesn't open the Unity Asset Store url of the asset anymore it always open the base Store url (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/) the Fast Store url works just fine though.

Could you please check it.

 

New version is live: 2.15f29a

2.15f29a
- CHANGE: Debug override removed

Just a minor update.

 

Both the Unity AS & Fast Store use the same string excepting the site URL itself, so if one was to fail, I would think the other would as well.

I checked quite a few to verify and so far haven't noticed any issues. What version of GYA, Unity, platform are you running under and any other relevant info you might think of and I can check further.

 

Hi

I investigated a bit more and discovered it only happens when chrome is the default browser. I already had trouble with chrome and other softwares trying to open urls with # in the url.

It's a bit weird because i'd swear it worked fine a couple of weeks ago before i upgrade my PC from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

I'm using Windows 10 Pro, Chrome 44.0.2403.157 m, Unity 5.1.2f1 Personal and GYA 2.15h29a.

P.S. when i opened "the About Chrome" page to see the version, it auto-updated to the last chrome version (45.0.2454.85 m) that doesn't support NPAPI so i can't run Unity Web Plugin anymore on chrome so i guess now i don't care about this problem anymore

 

Ahh Chrome, I wouldn't have run across that myself as I don't typically use Chrome. Seems there is always something when it comes to browsers. Sigh.

I'll look into it in any case and appreciate the extra info.

 

New version is live: 2.15i27a

2.15i27a
- Fixed: Possible error when refreshing while the Asset Store was in a tab

 

If you don't already have GYA in your arsenal, nows a great time, as it is on sale via Level 11!

 

Hi Xeir, I've purchased GYA and would like to know if it can automate the following process for updating Mega-Fiers, Mega-Shapes, Mega-Scatter and Mega-Flow. To update these I have to do it in a specific order, and I think there are also some files that are duplicated (e.g. xxxx 1.cs) that need to be deleted. It's a little frustrating....

This is an example of how I update these combined assets:

Delete Assets/Mega-Fiers
Import Mega-Shapes
Import Mega-Fiers (do not import Mega Shapes folder or Mega-Fiers Test Scene)
Import Mega-Scatter (do not import Mega Shapes folder)
Import Mega-Flow (do not import Mega Shapes folder)
Delete any duplicate files (e.g. xxxx 1.cs)

EDIT - also does GYA support multiple copies of Unity on the same machine? I opened up a second copy of Unity on my Mac however when I favourite Assets in one it doesn't update in the other. I manually hit refresh but favourites aren't in sync. They remain 0 on the second instance of Unity.

EDIT 2 - I can get Favourites to sync however I have to close down the second copy of Unity and re-open it. It would be nice if this would update on refresh

Thanks!

 

Hey there radimoto, welcome aboard!

Automation is limited to the importing of multiple selected files or entire user created groups. As to the rest ..

Duplicate files occur when the meta files within a given unitypackage do not match the pre-existing files within a project during an import/update. This was implemented within Unity 5 itself to prevent accidental overwrite of files. Unity 3.x/4.x did not have this protection/issue.

Sadly, I do not own any of the Mega-xxxx assets to check/test in further depth on these particular assets, so I'm just going by the file structure shown on the Asset Store. If the Mega-xxxx packages, which appear to have a shared portion, the MegaShape folder (not including the MegaShapePro folder which is only part of MegaShapes), and if they have the same meta files, it should properly over-write those files instead of creating duplicates. Given that they do have a shared folder, I would think/hope that they should already be setup properly to handle this -OR- have a set update procedure, order of import, to account for any differences between packages. So the short of it is, as long as the developers meta files do not change, the files should be over-written.

Something to note: If parts of a project are manually copied over or back into a project, this could then lead to the creation of new meta files that no longer match the original within the unitypackage and you would end up with the creation of duplicates once again.

If you are interested, here are a few threads with some more info on it:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/up...-if-you-delete-the-files-first-broken.322226/
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/926826/in-unity-5-how-do-i-replace-files-instead-of-appen.html

Yes, as you found, GYA does work with multiple instances of Unity and different versions as well. To note, if using an older version Unity, just make sure to download/import the appropriate version of GYA.

I'll look into the Favorites simultaneous syncing across the instances of Unity. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention.

 

Solution in testing and appears to function as expected. I'll make a version available for you to test out.

Edit: Let me know when you've had a chance to test it, thanks.